Obama’s Selective Speech Police

March 5, 2013 by

Where’s the Obama speech police?

Saturday Night Live recently featured a skit that mocked Jesus, depicting Jesus slaying with a sword Roman soldiers. “He’s risen from the dead,” said the narrator, “and he’s preaching anything but forgiveness.” Apparently it caused enough of a hoopla to prompt Sears and JC Penney to pull their advertising from the show.

Last year the Obama administration strongly supported a U.N. Human Rights resolution (# 16/18)  that  “deplores” and “condemns” advocacy of “religious hatred”.

At a U.N. “High-Level Meeting on Combating Religious Intolerance” last year, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the Obama administration would use “some old-fashioned techniques of peer pressure and shaming” against those who do “what we abhor.”

So did the Obama administration use old-fashioned techniques of peer pressure and shaming against Saturday Night Live? Did it bring peer pressure or shame upon artist Andres Serrano or those who exhibited his “Piss Christ” in New York City last fall?

No, but it certainly did against the filmmaker of “Innocence of Muslims” – the amateurish YouTube video that the administration erroneously claimed sparked the attack against the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, in which three Americans including the ambassador died. The filmmaker was sentenced to a year in jail. To be sure, the charges didn’t pertain to the content of the film, but it’s doubtful  he would have been arrested if not for the film.

In other words, such shame and peer pressure is only reserved for those who criticize Islam.

This is certainly not to suggest that the Obama administration should go after those who mock or criticize Christianity. Instead, it should refrain from condemning the mocking of any religion, be it Christianity or Islam – because apart from implicit restrictions on freedom of speech, it could lead to explicit ones. Condemnation should come from those outside of government.

So here we have a situation where the U.S. government vows to speak out against the mocking of Islam, yet provided funds and sponsorship for the mocking of Christianity (when the National Endowment of the Arts sponsored the “Piss Christ” exhibition).

When it comes to matters involving religion, the Obama administration is not an equal-opportunity shamer.

Filed Under: Free Speech, Religion

Vehicles of Human Consciousness

October 18, 2012 by

“The plain fact is that the materialist picture of the body and brain as the producers, rather than the vehicles, of human consciousness is doomed.”

Stirring words from Dr. Eben Alexander, M.D., a neurosurgeon who contracted a rare bacterial meningitis four years ago and was in a coma for a week, with a non-functioning neocortex. Medically, he knew that there’s no way a person can experience consciousness when the neurons of one’s cortex are reduced to complete inactivity. Prior to his experience he was like most other scientists, who just think that science, not faith, is the road to truth. “Before my experience I strongly suspected that this was the case myself,” he writes. Yet during that coma he experienced consciousness – a consciousness so profound that it completely changed his outlook on life. Read about his account here.

It’s ironic that the number of atheists are swelling. Because they’re bumping up against more and more compelling accounts of persons who’ve experienced what it’s like on the other side. I suspect that such accounts are going to slow the march of atheism in America.

Meantime, all I can say is you’d better be good. Because there’s probably someone watching your every move.

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Some Beach

May 29, 2012 by

Attention atheists: since in your view there’s no heaven or afterlife to look forward to, perhaps your goal is to live life to its fullest in order to achieve the closest thing you can to heaven on earth.

Have I got the thing for you.

Go jogging on the ocean beach in your bare feet. Do it close enough to the water so that the surf and foam from the crashing waves rush around your feet and ankles. And go in the early morning before the crowds come.

That’s what I did a couple of times this past Memorial Day weekend, at Bethany Beach in Delaware. And I’ve gotta tell ya, I was wondering if that’s what heaven is like.

If you’re not a jogger, going for a walk along the beach in your bare feet in the early morning, letting the surf rush around your feet and ankles, will give you nearly the same effect.

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The Greatest Person Who Ever Lived Redux

March 19, 2012 by

This Saturday the atheists are planning a big rally on the National Mall. With that in mind, allow me to put in my two cents.

While purging some old files I came across a short write-up of mine from December 19–. Wait. Scratch that. It was from so long ago that I’m not giving away the year for fear of revealing how many decades I’ve been around. Let’s just say it was from the 1990s.

It was addressed to Max Wilkinson, Competitions Editor, Weekend FT – a.k.a. Financial Times. The competition was to explain in a few paragraphs who one thinks is the greatest person who ever lived and why.

I know I didn’t win because I never heard back. Today I did an Internet search to see if I could find out who did win, but there’s no trace of the competition – apart from someone who said their claim to fame was that they won an essay contest on the greatest person who ever lived (and didn’t reveal their pick). A search for the whereabouts of Max Wilkinson came up dry as well, so I can’t ask him directly.

Looking back, I thought my entry was pretty damn good. My pick? Jesus Christ. As I mentioned to Mr. Wilkinson, my conclusion has nothing to do with anything divine. Even if one is an atheist and believes Jesus Christ wasn’t endowed with any divine attributes, one still should concede that J.C. was the greatest person who ever lived, for reasons explained below.

So here goes:

The Greatest Person Who Ever Lived

Jesus Christ was the greatest person who ever lived because he more than any other person was responsible for helping to suppress humans’ innate tendency for aggression.

For the vast majority of human existence, our species were hunter-gatherers in which people lived in self-sufficient small bands primarily consisting of the extended family. They depended on no other bands for their sustenance. Indeed, outsiders were usually regarded as competition for resources.

Human beings evolved under this system. Millions of years of natural selection shaped them to be loyal to and supportive of members of their own group, while none of these built-in tendencies developed vis-à-vis persons outside of the group. Lack of concern and suspicion toward outsiders often engendered outright hostility and violence.

Beginning about 8000 B.C. this simple, stable way of life largely disappeared in the western world. The agricultural revolution and subsequent urbanization radically altered “in-group” and “out-group” relations. Economic interdependency caused the number of face-to-face contacts to increase enormously—not only among family members and workmates, but also among casual acquaintances and complete strangers. Survival now depended on cooperation, not competition, with out-groups.

Humans’ innate propensity to be unfriendly toward out-groups ran directly counter to this need for cooperation. Happily, Jesus Christ helped solve the problem. He created an all-powerful social institution that instructed humans to show love, benevolence, and forgiveness toward fellow humans. His Golden Rule probably has done more to promote smooth relations among humans than any other mechanism.

Unlike virtually all other animals, humans have the ability to employ cultural adaptation in order to get around our biological shortcomings. Christianity has been our most important cultural adaptation.

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Medieval Middle East Thinking Gets Applied to U.S. Law

February 29, 2012 by

I just read one of the most unbelievably alarming things that I’ve read in a long time. A U.S. judge let off the hook someone who assaulted an athiest for mocking Mohammed, because “in many Arabic-speaking countries something like this (mocking Mohammed) is definitely against the law there. In their society in fact it can be punishable by death and it frequently is in their society.”

When I first cursorily read it I thought it was the assaulter saying that, and I was ready to tell him, “Dude, you’re not in the Middle East anymore, where they do those things. You’re living in America now. Let me tell you a thing or two about how things work here. We have freedom of speech. People are allowed to mock religions. Being able to do that without fear of physical punishment is one of the things that make our country so great. If you don’t like it, then go somewhere else.”

But then I read it again. I had to do a double take, and catch my breath, when I saw that it was the American judge who said that!

Yes, Mechanicsburg, Penn. District Judge Mark Martin said that. I’m still reeling over it.

So Judge Martin, let me tell you a thing or two about how things work in America. This isn’t the Middle East, where they do those things and where the standard of living and quality of life are substantially lower than here, largely because they do those things. You’re living in America now. We have freedom of speech. People are allowed to mock religions. Being able to do that without fear of physical punishment is one of the things that make ours such a great country. If you don’t like it, then move to another country. Or at least resign from your judgeship.

Let us hope that there are not more people of authority out there who think along the same lines as Judge Martin. If there are more and more like him, then say goodbye to America as we know it.

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Santorum Channelling Twain?

February 25, 2012 by

So GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum said, “Satan has his sights on the United States of America.”

Were he alive today, Mark Twain probably would have a thing or two to say about that. This is what he said over a hundred years ago about ol’e Satan himself:

“We can at least respect his talents. A person who has for untold centuries maintained the imposing position of spiritual head of four fifths of the human race, and political head of the whole of it, must be granted the possession of executive abilities of the loftiest order.”

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Hitchens Converts

December 16, 2011 by

The world just lost one of the greatest and most eloquent warriors in the fight against the existential threat of radical Islam. Christopher Hitchens, 1949-2011. See him at his finest two posts below.

When a soldier charging toward the enemy with the American flag falls on the field of battle, another is to immediately pick it up and keep running with it. But no one soldier is going to be able to fill Hitchens’ boots. He was a good as they come. Probably irreplaceable. All of the rest of us are just going to have to try that much harder. And who knows – maybe sometime, somewhere out of the dust and smoke, someone worthy of filling his boots will indeed emerge.

As for the other war Hitchens waged throughout his life – i.e. against religion and belief in God and the afterlife – now he knows that he was mistaken in that regard. Days before Hitchens’ death, Mark Judge asked in The Daily Caller, “Is Christopher Hitchens About to Convert?”

No word on whether he converted while still living in this dimension. But one thing is certain: he’s no doubt a believer now. He doesn’t no longer exist. He most certainly still exists, in a different dimension.

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Want Health and Happiness? Try Church

September 19, 2011 by

It is counter-intuitive that religious people would be healthier and live longer than atheists (and agnostics). After all, this life is the only life that atheists have. This is it. In their view there’s no afterlife. So you’d think that they’d work harder on exercising and eating right in order to extend their lifetimes to the fullest extent possible, since, in their view, there’s nothing beyond this life. You’d think that instead of going to church for an hour on Sunday morning, using that time instead to go jogging would be much more effective in extending their longevity. You’d think they’d also do everything in their power to achieve happiness – reaching heaven on earth, since they don’t think there’s anything beyond.

Conversely, you’d think that religious people wouldn’t be as concerned about diet and exercise or living longer, because the sooner one dies, the sooner one can go to heaven. And you’d think that they wouldn’t be as concerned about achieving happiness in this life because they believe that that’s what awaits them in the next.

But you’d be wrong in those assumptions. It’s just the opposite from that described above. Religious people, on average, are healthier, happier, and live longer than atheists or agnostics.

For the lowdown, click here.

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Failure to Think Outside the Box

May 17, 2011 by

Sir Isaac Newton said, “I was like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”

If Sir Isaac Newton had a few pebbles, Stephen Hawking might have a few boulders. But the great ocean of truth still lies undiscovered before him.

Hawking, the noted physicist – and now the noted atheist – thinks there’s no God or afterlife. That’s because he only bases his judgments on what’s scientifically measurable, observable, and/or explainable. But as indicated above, there’s a vast ocean of truth out there that Hawking has yet to discover.

A Creator would have left nothing to chance – He would have set up our world, or our universe, so that everything is scientifically explainable. Except perhaps gravity. Last I checked, no noted scientist had a good explanation for what causes gravity.

And there are other things that aren’t scientifically explainable. I recently read a fascinating book called “Evidence of the Afterlife: The Science of Near-Death Experiences”, where the author, a physician and scientist, lays out nine lines of evidence showing that there is a spiritual realm in addition to our worldly realm. As a natural-born skeptic myself, it’s compelling stuff.

And if one thinks outside the box, rather than be stuck in a straightjacket of only abiding by what’s scientifically measurable in our worldly realm, then one could accept that there is a spiritual realm in addition to our worldly realm.




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